The Chief Lake plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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68° on Nov. 13, 1999, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 65° in 1917.
Chief Lake’s center stands about 1,350 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,280 ft to 1,520 ft, a difference of 240 ft: rolling country.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Cambrian, undivided (sandstone), from the Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 40×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Cambrian, 487 to 542 million years old. About 14 mi of the line.
Biotite-schist. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Quartzite. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.6 to 2.5 billion years old. About 4 mi of the line.
Granite, tonalite, gneiss. Age: Paleoproterozoic, 1.8 to 1.9 billion years old. About 2 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Chief Lake reaches the Gulf of America by way of the Lac Courte Oreilles, the Couderay, the Chippewa and the Mississippi: about 1,930 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Lac Courte Oreilles, Lake Wissota and Holcombe Flowage.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Chief Lake; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Chief Lake has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 80° in July; winter nights fall to about 2° in January. About 31 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Chief Lake normally reaches 40° and falls to 24°. The record high is 62°, in 2025; the record low −6°, in 1943. The most rain on this date, 1.60 in, fell in 1909.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Hayward Area threaded record (Hayward Municipal Airport, 9 miles northwest, 140 ft lower). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
